Friday, October 23, 2009

I now have officially sorted and gotten rid of more than half the junk in my basement!! I am obscenely proud of myself, seeing as I had to root through all my precious books that had been stored away for safe keeping and decide what I would keep and what I would donate.

For some reason, all I could think of was the movie "Sophie's Choice." Deciding which books were more valuable than others hurt, but I got stronger and more decisive (or cruel) when sorting.

"I can get this at the Library."

"I hardly read this anymore."

"Yes! We can throw that one away! What?...oh, right..that's your book."

I was on a sorting, chucking, donating spree! And boy it felt gooood! I wouldn't say I'm a huge pack rat, but I do tend to hold onto a lot of books. I'm a re-reader. If I like it, the odds are I'll read it again - and working at Libraries means lots of opportunities to get my mitts on weeded books that I still want.

Of course, that being said, I had lots of books too that I "couldn't bare to get rid of." Or "Loved like crazy." Or "Wait! That's a classic and I'm sure worth something!" (yeah right.)

But I don't judge myself too harshly. I can get rid of lots of things easily, just books are difficult.

Jeremie was pretty good and only really started to shake his head a little grinning, while I explained how continuing to own this book was imperative to our future happiness.

Now that the basements done, the real challenge begins!

I have to sort through all the stuff in the rest of the house! We only have an 8x8x8.5 pod to pack this all in - so I have to be sure.

All the furniture will be flattened (excluding the couch of course), we will stack the boxes as high as we can, and are going to mark out the exact measurement of the pod in the floor of the basement with masking tape to make sure everything fits. (Great tip pop!)

The only "odd" items will be things like Jeremie's guitar and my spinning wheel, since we can't get those into a box.

Its funny going through the house, and evaluating its worth and deciding if its worth keeping or if we should leave it.

We've considered leaving the t.v., several bookcases, my desk, and even my bureau.

I really have to think of it all in tiny little steps, or I begin to get anxious and overwhelmed. So I plan out my days with 3 or 4 things to do, and I seem to be getting quite a lot done!

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comments:

Hi Jennifer- I follow your Momma's blog. Your on the right track! Most important is having your head in the right place, sounds like (I'll sound like a momma hear), for being a youngster, you've got that going for you! Good luck!